TWO teenage mums who subjected a terrified 16-year-old to a frenzied and brutal attack were yesterday found guilty of attempted murder.

The girl was repeatedly stabbed, kicked, punched and forced to strip during her ordeal on the banks of the River Tees in Thornaby, near Stockton.

She was found by police covered in blood and naked after fleeing from her attackers and running for help towards the town centre.

Dannielle Moore, who used the knife and was described as “the driving force”, was jailed for ten years at Teesside Crown Court.

Her friend, Nicola Dawson, was jailed for six years for what Judge Peter Fox, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, called her supporting role.

Moore collapsed in the dock, sobbing with her head in her hands, when she was convicted, while Dawson showed little emotion. The 19-year-old friends held hands as they stood awaiting their fate after the jury had been deliberating for five-and-a-half-hours.

During the trial, the jury was told that Moore was angry with the younger girl because she had lost her handbag containing sentimental items.

The father of her child had died not long before, and she carried around a photograph of him and a T-shirt, the court had been told.

After the bag went missing, the 16-year-old was frogmarched around Thornaby by the other two to look for it.

At one point, they went to Dawson’s home where Moore got a kitchen knife, and then took their victim to a secluded spot on the riverbank.

Moore stabbed the girl in the arm, leg and side, and the pair repeatedly punched and kicked her.

The court was told that she escaped with her life only because she managed to grab the knife and snap the blade from the handle.

Judge Fox told the pair: “This was a savage, frenzied and merciless attack which terrified, seriously injured and humiliated a vulnerable 16-year-old girl in appalling circumstances.

“I can reach only one conclusion which is that she truly fought for her life and that life-and-death struggle – resulting in her managing to break the blade from its handle of the weapon that you were intent on driving into her upper chest, Dannielle Moore – somehow saved her.

“What makes it even worse is that this was the culmination of a longer episode of bullying of the worst kind and involved the chilling element of planning where you equipped yourselves with that kitchen knife.”

The judge said the victim has been physically and mentally scarred by the late-night ordeal last July.

Brian Russell, for Moore, of Tedder Avenue, Thornaby, said Moore had had time to reflect her apparent lack of remorse at the time of the incident.

Peter Johnson, for Dawson, of Laurel Avenue, Thornaby said: “She is profoundly remorseful and sorry for her part. She accepts that this was a savage incident.”